


Shovel

by michelel72



Series: Near Point [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Shovel Talk, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22396492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michelel72/pseuds/michelel72
Summary: October 2002: Jonathan pays a visit to his soon-to-be brother-in-law.
Series: Near Point [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571716
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Shovel

**Author's Note:**

> Just filling in a bit of backstory for this 'verse.

(October 2002)

Jonathan rings the doorbell and then huddles into his coat to wait. It's been a warm month, but of course today they're getting a minor cold front. It's honestly not that bad right now, probably in the upper 40s, but he almost thinks he can _feel_ it dropping and the forecast says it'll be down to the upper 30s by sunrise. Just the thought makes him want to shiver.

It takes about a minute, but Dan finally answers the door, carrying Emma. Jonathan meant to get here after she was asleep. Maybe she napped too long. "Um," Dan says. "Hi?"

Jonathan gives him a quick, polite smile. "Hi. Jon Davis, Katie's brother." He would put his hand out, too, because an introductory handshake is part of the routine, but he's not going to make the guy juggle Emma around for it. She's, what, sixteen months or so and active, so she's an armful at the best of times.

Dan smiles a little, partly uneasy, partly confused, partly acknowledging the half-joke. Jonathan's not going to give him too hard a time about it, because it's not like anyone else ever recognizes him either, but it did take Dan an awfully long time to learn to recognize him, even when Jonathan was starting to babysit Emma so Dan and Katie could go out on dates.

He'll never understand how anyone could leave their child with someone they don't recognize. But Dan trusts Katie and Katie trusts Jonathan, so at least there's _some_ excuse.

 _Emma_ recognizes him and she's just a toddler. She tries to reach for him, but Dan bounces her a little to distract her, since he doesn't know what's going on yet.

"Sorry to just drop in on you like this. It's not an emergency or anything like that. I was just wondering if you had a few minutes to chat."

Dan sighs a little, evidently guessing where this is going. "Yeah, sure." He steps back so Jonathan can enter.

The house is delightfully warm. Jonathan doesn't let his relief show, of course, but he's quick to unfasten his coat to let the warmth in as quickly as possible. It was a long walk from the T, and it'll be a long walk back.

"Let me just go get Emma busy so we can get this over with," Dan says. But as he starts to turn away, Emma protests, reaching for Jonathan again.

Jonathan gives her a quick blowfish impression and then boops her nose, and she giggles and hides her face against Dan. Dan looks surprised that it was that easy, but Emma just needed her own greeting.

Dan takes Emma off to the family room, which Jonathan knows has been thoroughly child-proofed and well-stocked with safe toys. Jonathan just waits in the entryway until Dan returns.

"So is this part two of your shovel talk?" Dan asks.

"Not exactly," Jonathan says. "Was there a part one?" You'd think he'd remember giving such a thing, but he doesn't.

"That nice interrogation you put me through about my intentions, back when Katie and I first started dating," Dan says. "I admit, I did expect you to be a little more explicit at the time. You didn't outright say anything about your police training or your gun or any of that. Your brother was a lot scarier with his version."

Jonathan has to roll his eyes a little. "Oh, he was not scary."

Dan crosses his arms. "I think I'd know, since I was the one he gave it to."

Huh. Maybe he was a little intimidated. "Chris is just bluster," Jonathan tells him. It's possible Jamie said something, too, but no one is ever scared of Jamie.

But there's really not much to what Chris does for these things.

Maybe it's a weird cultural discrepancy or something. Jonathan doesn't know much about Dan's background, but it seems like it must have been … well, softer. Maybe he just needs a better explanation of how it all works than Chris is likely to have given.

Jonathan slides over into Chris's accent and mannerisms. "He'll put his hand on your shoulder like this — he wants to put his arm around your shoulders, but you're taller, you know? It doesn't work so good when you're taller, so he'll just grab your shoulder and shake you a little, all friendly-like. And he'll lean in, and he'll call you Dan, Danny, buddy."

Yeah, Dan doesn't much like being called _Danny_ , at least in this particular context. He's been watching Jonathan with surprise, apparently not expecting a replay of the conversation Chris has had with every guy who's ever dated either one of their sisters, but his eyes narrow at the nickname. Jonathan files that information away. He tries to stick to the names people give for themselves anyway, but that's rarely the full story.

Dan also doesn't love the Chris-style manhandling, but he doesn't seem particularly intimidated by it, at least right now. Maybe he was exaggerating for effect. Or maybe he wants Jonathan to think he doesn't need to bother with threats since Chris would have done them better.

If so, joke's on him, since Chris isn't very good at being threatening and Jonathan's not here to threaten him anyway. But he might as well see this through, just to make sure there's not actually any kind of problem between Dan and Chris.

"He likes to play up the whole Jersey stereotype for this, even though that's more Italian than Irish, but whatever. And he'll talk about how Katie's such a great girl, and as her brother, he's gotta look out for her, y'know? So you're not gonna break her heart or nothing, are ya, Danny? And he'll grab you by the back of the neck and shake you a little again, like so —"

But then Jonathan drops his hand and the impression of Chris, taking a step back to give them both space and fighting not to flinch.

"And then he pats you on the back and takes you out for a drink, and you're halfway to best friends by the end of the night, unless something has changed a _lot_ in the past few years. He's out to make friends, not enemies, but he feels like he has to make the speech. If he ever thought you did upset her, he'd call you names, and if for some reason you went all the way down to New Jersey for it he might ask if you want to fight, but he's not really going to go after you. He knows all that fighting-for-honor stuff had to stop when he graduated."

Jonathan shakes his hand out and makes a face.

"That, um, that neck-shake thing. Don't … you aren't really grabby like that, which, thank you. Love your work, big fan. But … if you're ever tempted for some reason to grab me like that … just don't, okay? I … um. I don't react well to it."

Dan makes a face. "So _this_ is when you talk about how you're a big, dangerous policeman."

For fuck's sake. "It wasn't," Jonathan says. "But fine, let's get that crap out of the way, too." He heads over into the dining room, because he doesn't want Emma to catch even a whisper of this.

Mark knows Jonathan could hurt people and thinks it matters that he chooses over and over again not to. Maybe Dan needs to think the same thing.

Jonathan closes the door to the kitchen, and once Dan follows him through the door from the entry, he circles back and closes that, too.

They could spend all night debating it, figuring out just how scary Dan wants him to be and wants him _not_ to be, but that would just make it all into a whole _thing_ between them, which wouldn't help anything. Better to be quick about it.

"I fucking hate doing this," Jonathan mutters. Then he drops his head and pulls on the persona he just thinks of as the snake.

They've never considered testing it, but Jonathan is pretty sure that Tonya could put him on his ass if they ever had to fight one another. He suspects she thinks the same. He outmasses her, but not by enough to make a real difference, and she knows ways to make that work against him. So unless he _really_ took her by surprise, her far better training means he would lose. She's been studying proper self defense since her early teens.

This persona scares the crap out of her. Even though she _knows_ him and knows he would _never_ hurt her, and even though she's got to be confident she can hold her own, he's still able to get past her certainty about all of those things, make her fall back a step into an automatic defensive position.

He doesn't know himself how far he could take it, how deep he could go. Whether maybe he could render all her advantages useless, if he believed it enough.

Mark has never seen this persona and he _never fucking will_.

It's a grab bag of the worst people Jonathan has encountered in his job, the ones who don't need muscles or weapons to terrify. It's the knowledge that bodies are so, so fragile, and precisely where. It's the knowledge that anything can be a weapon. It's the knowledge that Dan has a few inches on him and absolutely nothing else, that Jonathan is stronger and has faster reflexes.

It's the knowledge that, if Jonathan wanted to hurt Dan, Dan wouldn't get to the door. The knowledge that, in the space of two seconds, Jonathan has catalogued every item in the room and knows how to turn at least two of them into lethal weapons within moments. The knowledge that he could do it fast and permanent. The knowledge that he could keep it silent or make it loud, and neither would change the outcome.

It's the shift in his posture, the look in his eyes when he raises his head, the sly slithering certainty in his voice when he says, "If I wanted to hurt you? Yeah. I could."

And as soon as Dan starts to see it, as soon as his eyes start to widen, Jonathan slams the snake back into its box. He can't let Dan get _too_ scared of him or he'll screw things up for Katie.

"But I'm honestly not here to threaten you," he says, overcorrecting into the useless-dipshit role he plays around most other cops. It's as far from threatening as anything else Jonathan has handy, with its vacuous smile and general air of incompetence.

Dan blinks, clearly wondering if he really saw what he thought he did. That's probably the right place to leave it, with Dan not _quite_ sure but unnerved just enough that he won't push it.

Jonathan shoves the dipshit back, too, leaving just the tired brother who tries to be a good cop. "I really don't want to hurt anyone. Chris grabbed me like that several years back and I nearly broke his arm before I caught myself. I don't have enough brothers to go around breaking them like that, but that _one thing_ is something I don't think I can control my reaction to. It's a reflex thing. I'm telling you about it because I _don't_ want to hurt you, okay? You're Katie's boy— _fiancé_ and Emma's dad. Just … let's just stick to not touching each other and call it a day, okay?"

He opens the door to the entry because it's really not safe for them not to be able to hear Emma for long.

"Then … why are you here?" Dan asks.

Jonathan shrugs and sighs and heads back to the entry. "Just … congratulations on your engagement? Tentative welcome to the family, to the extent I'm allowed to have any say in that?" He turns to face Dan, who has followed him. "A chance to clear the air, if there's anything you want to say to me without Katie around?"

Katie brought Dan to Jonathan's wedding last week, so Jonathan's orientation probably isn't an issue, for a refreshing change. Dan didn't act weird about Mark being Jewish, either. He seems to be Catholic enough for Katie; Jonathan isn't going to investigate that any further, because how Catholic he considers himself to be these days is none of Dan's business, either. It's a little late for Dan to be jumpy about Jonathan being a cop, since that's more or less how they all met. There could be other issues, but those are probably the big ones.

If Dan does have a problem with Jonathan, it's apparently not anything he's been waiting to say at the first opportunity. He just presses, "And this really isn't about how I'd better not break her heart?"

Jonathan sighs again. "If you break her heart … if Katie wants me to, I'll say mean things about you at parties. If Katie wants me to, I'll tell the Newton PD that I'm not _sure_ but you might be a gold mine if they ever need to hit a ticketing quota. If Katie wants me to, I'll tip everyone on shift at Frappery twenty dollars _each_ to screw up your order to the limits of what can be legally conveyed as food, every time you go in, even if I have to sell my car to pay for it. I'm no 'ice cream artist', so I'd be relying on their professional judgment, but I don't mean just leaving out the chocolate syrup. I'm talking banana and mint ice creams blended together, maybe with a sardine topper. If Katie wants me to, I'll throw in another fifty-dollar tip pool for every full playthrough of 'Macarena' they can manage while you're still inside the shop. Hell, if you break her heart and Katie wants me to, I'll add another _hundred_ -dollar tip pool if they can get Emma singing 'Macarena'."

"Please stop saying 'Macarena'," Dan mutters.

Man, if he can be earwormed just by hearing the name of a song twice, he's doomed. Good to know.

Jonathan shifts into end-of-the-radio-ad delivery. "Asterisk, small print, song title is for illustration purposes only and is not guaranteed. Actual track to be selected from the top five songs most desperately hated by Daniel Robert Fournier as determined on a recurring monthly basis. Terms and conditions apply; tax, title, and license extra; see store for details." Because if his general oddness is going to be a problem, better to find that out now.

Dan just blinks at him again. Which maybe isn't great, but Jonathan has certainly provoked worse reactions. Dan didn't really react any particular way about his full name, so Jonathan will have to keep watching to see which version he _actually_ prefers.

"And if Katie wants me to, I'll shake your hand and say I wish things could have worked out and leave you the hell alone. Do I want you to break her heart? Of course not. She's had too much of that. But … there are so many worse things. Have your fights _now_ , before you tie yourselves together permanently. Figure out how many kids and who stays with them when and who gets up in the middle of the night. Decide how often the toilet gets cleaned and who has to do it. Do all the church counseling and maybe some secular stuff too. _Test_ this thing, make sure it'll hold before you actually lock yourself in. Be willing to wait or even walk away if you're not _certain_. But be good to each other while you figure it out."

Dan crosses his arms again. "You're really not going to tell me how if I hurt her, they'll never find my body?"

Jonathan counts to ten. "I'm not a murderer, Dan. If Annabeth's family —" but no, that puts contempt and anger in Dan's expression, not unease "— or friends or whatever traumatized you, maybe go find a way to deal with that. But … we talked about if you broke Katie's heart, not if you _hurt_ her. I'm a cop. _Hurt_ means something very specific to me. If I thought you were the kind of person who would _hurt_ her, I'd be talking to her right now, not you. I don't think you are. I think you actually almost halfway deserve her."

Dan looks about half offended, like he almost gets it but isn't sure.

"That's a compliment," Jonathan confirms. "No one could ever fully deserve her, but no one else has gotten to more than about a quarter. You seem like a great guy and a great father. I really don't think you would hurt her. But … I don't know. Maybe I'm not as good at telling who would do that kind of thing as I think. I've been wrong before."

Yeah, he's not gonna sleep tonight.

Dan frowns. "About who?" he demands.

Well, there's an unexpectedly personal question that Jonathan sees no earthly reason to answer.

Dan's frown turns to a scowl. "Did someone actually hurt Katie?"

 _Oh_. Jonathan lets himself smile. "Okay, you get another five percent for that. No, no one's hurt her like that. As far as I know, anyway. Maybe talk with her about it, just to be sure. And just so we're clear — if you _did_ actually hurt her … yeah, I'd be tempted to go after you, but me being in jail wouldn't help her. So I'd get her to safety, and then I'd spend the rest of my career and the rest of my life after that making sure you faced justice. Got it?" But he says it pretty lightly, because he really doesn't think it'll come to that. Katie has better judgment than he ever did.

But Dan's right that it bears saying. And he actually looks _reassured_ , of all things. Like it's important to him to know that people are looking out for Katie.

Maybe Jonathan should give him five more points.

"Anyway," he says, "I should get going. I just wanted to say congratulations. And to say good luck about the whole wedding thing — Mom's been waiting a long time for this one."

Dan winces. Hm. Jonathan's probably going to be getting an earful from Katie about various wedding things over the next few months, then.

But then Dan puts out his hand. "Thanks for stopping by." As they shake, he adds, "Want to say goodbye to Emma?"

Jonathan yanks his hand free and falls back a step, involuntarily. "No, not —" He lets Dan see him glance towards the dining room. "Not right now. Give her a kiss for me, okay?"

Jonathan is still too close to that shitty persona, and he's not positive it's properly packed away, and babies are so very fragile.

Dan regards him for a few seconds and then nods. He probably doesn't fully get it — Jonathan actually hopes he doesn't — but he seems to get enough to respect Jonathan's caution.

Dammit. Jonathan really doesn't want to leave things there. He doesn't want to take this mood home. He plasters on a cartoonish version of an intimidating expression. "Just so we're clear — I'm serious about being good to each other while you figure this out. If you break up, you break up, though I hope you don't. But if you're ever a dick to her — it's still her call, but I can do _much_ worse than 'Macarena'. Don't make me resort to Barney."

Dan actually winces. "Not that. Anything but that." But a tentative smile is trying to break free, too, as Dan finally seems to understand what Jonathan is aiming for.

If this thing works out between Dan and Katie, he and Jonathan will be brothers-in-law. Yes, if things go wrong, Jonathan will always and forever be on Katie's side. Short of that, though, there's no good reason for them to be at odds with each other. That would just hurt Katie.

And it would mean Jonathan would see a lot less of her. He's far too selfish to risk that, even if he did want to get into some kind of posturing contest with Dan. Which he doesn't anyway.

"I will always treat Katie with respect," Dan vows, playing it up just a little himself. "You have my word."

"See that you do," Jonathan mock-growls. He swiftly refastens his coat, nods curtly to Dan, and heads home.


End file.
